I was reading that a major constraint on chicken farmers in the US is that they have to rebuild their stock after huge losses in chickens, and you cannot just instantly magic up an infinite supply of new chickens – takes a while to scale that up. It sounded like the companies that raise chickens are not the same as the ones that produce eggs – like, if you’re an egg-producing-farm, you’re competing on the open market with individuals to buy chickens. So it’s gonna drive up the price for random individual who just wants a chicken and buys from the same chicken-raisers.
All that being said, if a chicken is going for $6, I cannot imagine that the price of a chicken is a huge part of the price of eggs. Like, feed, a hutch, care, heating, maintenance of the infrastructure…that’s gotta outweigh the price of the chicken substantially.
Yeah, the price of the chick is tiny. Once you have the coop the main cost is feed, except that if they use half of my property then I spend more in property tax for that half than I spend on chicken feed.
I don’t know chickens… But it seems like buying one is cheaper than buying a dozen eggs… I get it needs a place to live and upkeep… Even if you needed to buy 12 it seems like once they lay eggs you would end up with more eggs than you knew what to do with them… Sell them to your neighbors for 3 bucks a dozen and bam free eggs…
Yeah, it’s cheaper than buying eggs. I’m also using them to rehab the back yard. Before I moved in there was sort of a private junkyard back there, now the soil is in much better shape
Chicks used to be $2.70, $3.00 for the fancy ones like Easter Eggers.
I just paid $5.40 each for regular old red chickens. Easter Eggers were $7.50 It’s not like I’m NOT going to resupply my flock but damn, double price.
I was reading that a major constraint on chicken farmers in the US is that they have to rebuild their stock after huge losses in chickens, and you cannot just instantly magic up an infinite supply of new chickens – takes a while to scale that up. It sounded like the companies that raise chickens are not the same as the ones that produce eggs – like, if you’re an egg-producing-farm, you’re competing on the open market with individuals to buy chickens. So it’s gonna drive up the price for random individual who just wants a chicken and buys from the same chicken-raisers.
All that being said, if a chicken is going for $6, I cannot imagine that the price of a chicken is a huge part of the price of eggs. Like, feed, a hutch, care, heating, maintenance of the infrastructure…that’s gotta outweigh the price of the chicken substantially.
Yeah, the price of the chick is tiny. Once you have the coop the main cost is feed, except that if they use half of my property then I spend more in property tax for that half than I spend on chicken feed.
I don’t know chickens… But it seems like buying one is cheaper than buying a dozen eggs… I get it needs a place to live and upkeep… Even if you needed to buy 12 it seems like once they lay eggs you would end up with more eggs than you knew what to do with them… Sell them to your neighbors for 3 bucks a dozen and bam free eggs…
Yeah, it’s cheaper than buying eggs. I’m also using them to rehab the back yard. Before I moved in there was sort of a private junkyard back there, now the soil is in much better shape